


And all I really want is deliverance

by Florchis



Series: All I really want [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Season 02 AU, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:08:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29640009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: After one round with Hunter, Jemma still can not sleep. He might be able to help with that.
Relationships: Lance Hunter/Jemma Simmons
Series: All I really want [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2177916
Comments: 7
Kudos: 5





	And all I really want is deliverance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LibbyWeasley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibbyWeasley/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Libby! I hope you enjoy this though it's a bit bittersweet. 
> 
> Made a series out of this because it feels like there is still cloth to cut here.

Jemma lies awake on her new slash old bed and looks at the ceiling.

She is not a strange to insomnia- it started very young, while she was in University, no matter how hard she tried to keep her life under some semblance of healthiness: college run all over her with its all-nighters of study and its anxiety and its all caffeine at all times lifestyle. 

The Academy was more of the same, but things slowed down a bit at Sci-Ops- she was supposed to be settling into adulthood, being more centered and focused, still overworked and overexcited, but now under some semblance of control, no longer running against her peers, only against the world. 

On the Bus, the sleepless nights came more from enthusiasm than anything else. Until the Fall, that is. There is no need to expand on that. Jemma still feels ashamed for the nights she spent awake shedding bitter tears over Ward’s betrayal and the horrors it unraveled. He doesn’t deserve anything more from her.

Then came the Pod and Fitz’s coma and recovery, and then Hydra. She really hadn’t been able to catch a breath for the last couple of months, hadn’t she?

“You are awake.” Hunter’s voice is rough with sleep, and Jemma somehow manages to not envy him his ability to fall asleep next to a virtual stranger. “What is worrying you?”

“Go back to sleep, Hunter,” she says, and to sweeten the deal she cups his cheek with her hand. He leans into her touch but does not follow her command. The stubborn man.

Hunter sits on the bed, stretches his arms over his head, and takes a sip of water from the bottle on the nightstand. It’s a calculated move to distract her away from her tribulations, Jemma is not fooled, but it still works a little: she does take her time to appreciate the muscles of his back tensing and releasing with the movement. He is a nice specimen of a man, lean and strong, pure concentrated energy, and she could dispassionately observe him with a medical lens, but she very consciously decides that she’d rather not: she shifts onto her side, and leans closer until she can place a kiss right over his left hip. 

“Feeling naughty again already, Agent Simmons?”

He looks at her over his shoulder, pure unadulterated seduction stored in his long lashes, and Jemma wants to allow his charm to wave her away from her worries, but she can’t. In some ways, it helps that she doesn’t know more about him than what he looks like naked and that he has under his sleeve a mean trick he can do with his tongue that required her to bite on her knuckles to prevent her from waking up all base. In some other ways, it doesn’t help at all: he is nothing but a stranger, and how could she let herself be vulnerable with him.

How could she let herself be vulnerable with anyone.

“Always,” she says with more cheekiness than she actually feels. 

So far he has been marvelous at playing precisely the role she needed him to play: a feverish last hurray to life at sea level when they met, a torch of fervent light against her looming paranoia this time around. She presses two fingers against a sore spot on her collarbone where he bit her earlier, using the faint pain to center herself, and gives him a playful bite on the wrist of the hand he placed near her head.

“Jemma,” he says, and she feels tears pricking at her closed eyelids. “Love, are you okay?”

She wants to scream. It feels like such a waste, this handsome man naked on her bed and all she can do is barely keep the tears at bay, not because something is actually bad in this precise moment, but because now that she has let her shoulders get loose for the first time in what feels like forever, she is drowning under the weight of many terrible months.

She nods weakly, but she knows he is not fooled when he lays down next to her again, his hands firm on her collarbones. Jemma bites the inside of her cheek to gather courage, and launches at him, scrapping all the sensitive skin of her face and her neck against his stubble on her quest for his mouth. It is starting to get problematic, this way of ignoring her emotions that relies on his kisses like they were oases, but that feels like a problem for future her.

Present Jemma has Hydra raw on her skin, a dark, tight knot of feelings on her stomach that she can only hope to detangle someday, and someone that has been proven really good at blowing away all the thoughts from her mind.

“Jemma,” he whispers again in the middle of the kiss, and the way he says her name is both warm water lapping at her feet and a sharp reminder of what can not be left behind. “Do you think this is a good call?”

Jemma breaks the kiss to consider him. His hands are firm on her body, but his eyes are soft. He is not judging her, and that was part of the reason why she picked him up from the bar beside his good-looking hands: he seemed the kind of guy that wouldn’t judge her for getting a bit frisky. It is good that he is also the kind of guy to not judge her for falling apart.

“No,” she whispers back, “but I need it.”

Hunter lets out a slow, controlled breath- however it’s that he got into the present scrambled version of a circus of misfits that is SHIELD, he has been trained, and well. She had noticed it before, on the way he folds his clothes and how he gets dressed, but now his breathing technique would make May proud. 

“Okay.” He drags a heavy hand down the side of her body, gives himself a second to watch her body, and Jemma tries her best to not hide herself behind any flaunting. “What do you need?”

“I need you to fuck me.”

Another man would have made a lewd comment, would have taken pride in that being what she is asking for, but Hunter nods with all seriousness and leans down to kiss her. Maybe that’s why she is asking him and not anyone else.

She turns the kiss dirty almost right away, her teeth sinking on his lips hard enough to make him curse. She wants to rush him, needs him to feed that chiasm of solitude that has been living inside her soul. She surrounds his hips with her legs, uses the leverage to raise her lower body to rub their groins together. They have not bothered getting dressed yet, and Jemma is grateful: she feels like the tiniest mishap could tip her over, including needing to stop for a second to remove an item of clothing. 

But instead of giving in to her advances, Hunter peels her off him easily.

“No,” he says, and there is no flexibility to exploit on his tone. “You told me what you need. Let me give it to you, Jemma.”

There is no way she could be able to speak without bursting into tears, so she just nods. Hunter kisses her again, but when she tries to reciprocate the kiss, he shushes her with a hand on her cheek. She stays still and lets him kiss her, his lips pressing slowly against her lips in what feels like an embrace. He takes his sweet time prying her mouth open one maddeningly slow ripple of his mouth at a time until Jemma’s entire body is trembling with desire. It could have been a bad move, but it wasn’t: her mind can not focus on anything else but her need to be kissed properly, she is burning all over and he hasn’t touched her anywhere yet.

He does not kiss her, not even when she asks him in a broken moan: he moves his weight away from her body, and Jemma tries to breathe through the loss while he rummages on the nightstand and puts on a condom and a lick of lube for good measure. 

He does not kiss her when he starts fucking her slow and steady, and it’s probably for the best: a kiss would have been an alley for her mind to drift away and into a bad place again, but he is looking at her and his gentle eyes keep her tethered to reality. 

It feels different than any other sex encounter she has had, even their first time that was playful and steamy and the one prior to this one, that was rushed and a bit angry, a struggle for power. This time, Hunter feels like a force of nature all around her, not an earthquake but the neverending eroding power of the ocean. He makes her arousal grow in a way that feels almost mathematical in the way it’s carefully measured, but that is born from tenderness.

Jemma feels like she could break at any second, but he keeps finding ways to take her higher, and that only makes her grow stronger. Hunter keeps the rhythm in a steady crescendo, and when Jemma hits her peak it’s not a fall but a rise to ascension.

When she comes back to her senses, Hunter is coming back from the washroom, hands still cold from the water after having disposed of the condom. Jemma expects him to lay down by her side, but instead, he sits and runs a hand through her messy hair. Jemma feels a bit excessive in her own skin after the way he has very obviously catered to her needs and only hers.

He does not look dissatisfied, but he does look tired, and older than a few hours ago. Jemma won’t pretend she is not self-centered enough to not have enjoyed what just happened, but the least she could do is care. With how pliant and sated she is, it would be difficult to keep her natural curiosity to herself either way.

“You look preoccupied.” 

He runs a hand through his own short hair, and Jemma considers him from her position spread out on the bed. She won’t force him to tell her if he doesn’t want to- they might have had mindblowing sex three times already, but they don’t have the kind of trust for demands yet- and the ever-present mulling voices at the back of her mind seem to have quieted down enough to make sleep sound very tempting.

“Some things are better discussed over breakfast, love.”

“Mkay.” Jemma closes her eyes, holds onto the hand he has left close to her face. “Tomorrow then.”

He leans down to give her a kiss on her forehead. “Tomorrow,” he promises.

When she wakes up the next morning he is already gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
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